Sunday, May 18, 2014

The Sugar Mammy Colossus

Known for exploring issues of race, discrimination, sexual exploitation and power in her work, the artist [Kara Walker] said in an interview with Complex Magazine that she thought of the sphinx as “this woman-like creature or guardian of the city, the keeper of the riddle, the devourer of heroes.”

The full title of her work, figuratively 35 feet tall, is “A Subtlety or the Marvelous Sugar Baby an Homage to the unpaid and overworked Artisans who have refined our Sweet tastes from the cane fields to the Kitchens of the New World on the Occasion of the demolition of the Domino Sugar Refining Plant.”

I think a more accurate name would have been "The national monument to Negro obesity and diabetes."

And wouldn't have been more apropos to make the sculpture out of brown sugar? I can imagine the ape-ess artist upon realizing her mistake, slapping her paw against her forehead and shrieking Mutha-Oo-Oo-Oo-ka!

I also wonder if the back end of that thing dispenses Tootsie logs and torrents of Mellow Yellow?